The Ecological Airport Oxymoron
The opening of Portland International Airport designed by ZGF at a $2.15 billion last month1 is a showcase for sustainable mass timber design with a mostly solid timber structure and a stunning curved wooden roof. It’s a beautiful building and probably about as sustainable as an airport can be in 2024.2 There’s only one problem - Airports aren’t sustainable!
Mike Eliason in a set of tweets puts it best that all the careful design and hard work by the construction team to sequester some 2,300 tons of CO2 in the new terminal will be burned up in just 23 days worth of flights from Portland to Seattle alone.3
The building taken by itself is exceptionally green but the system in which the airport operates is an environmental black hole. We can’t separate a piece of the system alone and hold it up as exemplary when the rest of it falls down so badly. Especially when the building itself allows for the expansion of the number of flights from Portland, making the problem worse while hiding behind the aesthetics of sustainability.4
There is an easy start to make too. Just don’t allow short haul flights where there are rail connections instead. France and Spain are already banning flights where train journeys are less than 2.5 hours long.
So just remember the Ecological Airport is an oxymoron.
⚲ location: 45°35’12.4”N 122°35’32.7”W
It opens at least partly in July 2024, due to be completed 2026. See It’s stronger than steel, lighter than concrete and captures carbon — mass timber is the future | The Seattle Times↩︎
ZGF website claims 70% reduction in carbon footprint. With all the wood locally sourced within a 300 mile radius of the building.↩︎
From Mike Eliason ‘approx 30 flights/day. Distance between the airports is 200km. short haul flights emit 175g CO2 pp per km. Using 737-800 @ 50% capacity = 86 pax so 3.317 tons CO2/flight * 30/day = 100 tons CO2/day = 36,500 tons CO2/year’↩︎
Architects have tripped over themselves before. Foster + Partners quit Architects Declare following their design of Amaala Airport in Saudi Arabia. Zaha Hadid were also criticised for their participation in Western Sydney International Airport.↩︎